Obama Says You’re a Terrorist! (And for Once, That’s Bad)

The Lyndon LaRouche people have been pushing a theory for months now that President Obama should be removed from office under the 25th Amendment, on the grounds that he is losing his sanity. If they ever wanted proof, Obama delivered it at yesterday’s press conference. Obama lashed out that Republicans were “hostage-takers,” John Boehner was “a bomb thrower,” and his Democratic critics were “purist” and “sanctimonious.” When Republicans engaged in much more restrained free speech, Democrats accused them of inciting violence and tried to lay a potential assassination on their heads. Where are they now?

Although the president’s anger was obvious yesterday, his logic was not. Obama began by defending his compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for all Americans in exchange for allowing some Americans to collect unemployment checks for three years. He argued, without his speedy action, evil Republicans would have killed tax cuts for the middle class. “I’ve said before that I felt that the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts,” he said, repeating a perpetual Democratic talking point. (See video above.) “I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed,” he said. (Unconscious message to would-be hostage-takers: if you ever kidnap an American, hack off a hand, and we’ll talk.) He continued, “In this case, the hostage was the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed.” Actually, in this case, the president wanted to harm a certain set of Americans — the wealthiest — by raising their taxes, and the Republicans would not allow them to be harmed.

He pivoted to trashing another familiar foe, saying, “once John Boehner is sworn in as Speaker, then he’s going to have responsibilities to govern. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and be a bomb thrower.” Obama equates the mild-mannered Congessman with the Robert Mitchum eyelids to some ’60s, fist-pumping, window-breaking radical — the kind likely to be employed in one of Obama’s campaigns or living in his neighborhood in Hyde Park.

As though he had not sufficiently demonized his opponents, Obama added he was “itching for a fight on a whole range of issues.” Daniel Howes summed up the pissed-off presser in The Detroit News by writing that Obama “talked repeatedly about ‘battles’ and ‘fights,’ as if he was Patton preparing the troops for a dash across Sicily.”

So, where are the calls for civility and moderation? Where are the hand-wringing cries of incitement and extremism from the media, civic leaders, and mainline church clergy?

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When the Tea Party burst into town hall meetings on ObamaCare last September, the Democrats could not wait to accuse them of inciting violence — although Tea Partiers were more likely to become victims of SEIU thugs than to harm anyone. Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi warned that Republicans “have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause,” because some of the people listening “are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume.” She added, “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco.” Fox News reported she said this, “her voice catching in her throat,” referring to the murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and homosexual politician Harvey Milk.

The implication was clear: oppose the Democrats, and you are on the slippery slope to murder. It is a tried-and-true tactic of the Left, from blaming the assassination of JFK on ultra-conservatives — although Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist who defected to the Soviet Union — to Bill Clinton’s decision to blame the Oklahoma City bombing on Rush Limbaugh. The Left pulls it out whenever they lose on the facts — which is to say, they use it quite frequently indeed. Demonizing one’s opponents is easier than winning an argument, and it holds an additional charm for liberals: demonizing one’s opponents is possible.

The president lashed out like this for three reasons. He is so exceptionally thin-skinned that he can brook no dissent or criticism. His politics skew so radically Left that he is incapable of viewing the world the same way as most Americans (which is one of the reasons he is constantly trying to import new Americans). And he is fundamentally motivated by anger toward those he perceives as his enemies.

Obama may well be cracking under pressure, but I suspect he was fully lucid and explicated his worldview as forcefully as any sane person with his outlook could. His press conference yesterday was over-the-top, irresponsible, and instructive of the depths of the radicalism that controls the most powerful man in the world.